but death always sharpens back
into focus on waking—
that incessant tidal wash
of remembering and forgetting
STARLORN traverses the North African campaign of World War II and post-war apartheid South Africa as it follows the unlikely bond between an irreverent Luftwaffe fighter pilot, Hans Müller, and a black South African prisoner of war, Jacob Makwetu. Spanning decades and continents, Starlorn is a mediation on how their relationship becomes intertwined in ways that skirt life and death, divisions of race, ideology and navigating the aftermath of war.
ISBN 978-1-0671781-1-6
Publication date: November 2026
Stephen Symons was born in Cape Town in 1966. He has published award-winning poetry and short fiction in local and international journals, magazines, and anthologies, and he has authored five poetry collections and two collections of short stories. Symons holds a PhD in History (University of Pretoria) and an MA in Creative Writing (University of Cape Town). He was shortlisted for the 2015 Hudson Prize for Poetry (USA), the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry, 2017 Ingrid Jonker Prize, and 2023 South African Literary Awards. He won the Red Wheelbarrow Prize for Poetry in 2022. His fifth collection, The Algebra of Insignificance, was published by Karavan Press in 2024 and won the Olive Schreiner Prize for poetry in 2026. He lives with his family in Oranjezicht, Cape Town, where he runs a graphic design studio. Starlorn is his debut novel.
